An opera based on Pink Floyd‘s 1979 album The Wall, a collaboration between Opéra de Montréal and the band’s former bassist and chief songwriter Roger Waters, will premiere at the Quebec opera house in March 2017. The production, dubbed Another Brick in the Wall: The Opera also unveiled their haunting rendition of the album’s hit “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).”

On Thursday, Waters ventured to Montreal to discuss the production, which will be among the events showcased during the city’s 375th anniversary celebration. “It had been my experience that experiments in collaboration between the worlds of rock and roll and the worlds of symphonic music were generally disastrous and should be embarked upon with extreme trepidation,” Waters noted before adding that the Opéra de Montréal “were extremely persuasive.”

Related

Waters originally dismissed the offer to collaborate on the opera, but after being sent music from the production, he changed his mind. “I sat there not expecting to be moved, and I was moved,” Waters said Thursday (via France 24). “Very moved. So I approach this project with great enthusiasm.”

Waters serves as librettist on The Wall opera, with music written by Julien Bilodeau and baritone Étienne Dupuis in a role inspired by the album and film’s rock star Pink. Conductor Alain Trudel will guide the Orchestre Métropolitain for The Wall opera, which opens March 11th, 2017.

The story behind The Wall was partly borne out of an incident that occurred in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium in 1977, when a Pink Floyd concert ended with Waters spitting in the face of a fan who attempted to storm the stage. When asked whether The Wall‘s opera being staged in Montreal brings the album full circle, Waters said, “The Wall is about the journey from the enmity of spitting in someone’s face to the position where love becomes more important than that enmity.”

In December, Waters released Roger Waters: The Wall, a concert film and documentary about the long solo tour where he performed the album in its entirety.